


of everything that stands

by xylodemon



Series: deancas codas: season fifteen [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Love Confessions, M/M, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22281265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: Dean asks, "You know what this thing looks like? Or where it grows?""Typically, wildflowers bloom near sources of fresh water. But—" Cas gestures at the river. The bank is craggy and barren, choked with dead brush. "This place is nothing close to typical."
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: deancas codas: season fifteen [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1514186
Comments: 41
Kudos: 618





	of everything that stands

**Author's Note:**

> Super late 15x08 coda, partially based on Twitter speculation. Take what you want; give nothing back. Unbeta'd like an unbeta'd thing.

They come through Michael's portal alongside the river, near where Dean found Cas washing his hands their last time around. Purgatory smells the same—cold air, damp earth, rotten leaves. Dead twigs snap underneath Dean's boots. Déjà vu hits him like an uppercut to the jaw.

His brain buzzes for a second, skids around like old tires on a rough patch of road. When he gets his bearings again, he sees Cas crouched in front of the portal, using his angel blade to scratch a complicated sigil into the dirt.

"You warding it?" Dean asks.

Cas says, "Crudely," without looking up. His collar is crooked, and his hair is curling behind his ears. "It won't stop anything very determined, but it will slow them down." Standing, he continues, "Ideally, one of us would stay behind and guard it, but—"

"No way," Dean cuts in, too harsh, too quick. "We ain't splitting up."

Cas mutters, "I assumed you'd say that," like he thinks Dean's being unreasonable. Like Dean doesn't still have nightmares about this place, or about Cas' coat floating to the banks of a different river, about light flaring in Dean's face as Lucifer stabbed Cas in the chest.

Before Dean can say anything, Cas turns away and starts up the low rise leading into the trees. A gust of wind twists between them, tugging at the tails of Cas' coat.

Dean follows him, asking, "You know what this thing looks like? Or where it grows?"

"Typically, wildflowers bloom near sources of fresh water. But—" Cas gestures at the river. The bank is craggy and barren, choked with dead brush. "This place is nothing close to typical."

+

Their first fight is a trio of vampires that come slinking out of a thicket of trees. 

Cas drops the closest one before she can even flash her teeth. 

+

Their second fight becomes their third, and their third becomes their fourth, and their fourth becomes their fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. Vampires, more vampires, werewolves, wraiths. A rougarou with maggots for a face; a goat-like thing with horns on its head and hooves on its feet.

"What the fuck?" Dean snaps, wiping his sweaty face with his sleeve. "Does Chuck know we're here?"

"Possibly."

"So he's doing this? Bringing every monster in this shithole down on our heads?"

Cas steps back from the corpse smoking at his feet, a fire-breathing dog he'd had to smite because its hide was too tough for their knives. He says, "He could be. He created this place, so theoretically, he can still touch it, and influence it. But he's weak, and of all his creations, this has languished the longest without is attention. He could have trouble bending it to his will."

"Then what gives? Is it us?"

"Me, most likely." Wincing, Cas touches his cheek. "My grace is—"

"You're bleeding."

Huffing, Cas touches his cheek again. "I know."

Dean reaches for him without thinking, cradles the uninjured side of his face with one hand and touches the angry skin below the cut with the other. His thumb bumps the corner of Cas' mouth, and Cas makes a noise that Dean feels underneath his ribs. He closes his eyes for a second, breathes. When he opens them again, they're nose to nose. He almost dips into it, almost. Cas' lips part, soft and slow. Then he hustles Dean back by a handful of his shirt.

"All these years," he says, his voice tight. "All these years, and you wait until we're here?"

Before Dean can answer him, something snarls in the trees.

+

It's just a pair of werewolves, but they're exhausted from back-to-back-to-back fights. Dean tweaked his elbow at some point, and he has an aching bruise on his thigh from being thrown into a tree. They start out shoulder to shoulder, but get separated almost immediately. Dean swings his machete, stumble-steps back as his werewolf tries to circle around him. Behind him, Cas grunts in pain.

Dean's werewolf lunges at him, and they hit the ground rolling, end up scratching and grappling their way across the clearing and down the side of a long slope. Dean lands on top, and that gives him enough leverage to rear up and spear the werewolf through the heart. He pauses long enough to catch his breath, then heaves himself to his feet and cleans his machete's bloody blade with the werewolf's shirt.

Climbing up the hill is a struggle; there's no path, and it's steep enough that he spends most of the trip crawling on his hands and knees. It takes him ten minutes, maybe fifteen. He gets to the top with dirt in his mouth and bramble-scratches all over his hands.

Cas is gone.

+

Dean shouts, "Cas, you dumb sonofabitch," and pushes deeper into the trees. "Where the fuck are you?" His boot catches on a rock and he kicks it away with a snarl. "This better not be like last time. You better not've run off 'cuz you think I'm safer without you."

He can't think about the alternative—that Cas is hurt somewhere, dying. He puts his back to a tree and stretches his arm a few times to ease the ache in his elbow. He breathes in, out. In, out. His heart is beating in his throat.

"Please be okay," he whispers. He shifts down until he's sitting on the dirt and rests his machete across his knees. "Just—you gotta be okay."

He breathes again, rubs his burning eyes with the heels of his hands. All he can think about is the look on Cas' face as they fought, the set of Cas' shoulders as he walked out the door.

"I thought I wanted you to go. I thought—I thought it would be easier than waiting for you to decide that you don't wanna keep hanging around now that Chuck ain't making you." Dean tips his head back, swallows hard—once, twice. "I thought maybe if you left, I'd stop needing you so damn bad.

"But I can't—fuck. I can't stop it. No matter how—how bad I want to, I can't stop it. I don't even know if what I feel is even me, or if it's something Chuck put in my head for shits and giggles. But it's there. And I can't—I can't let it go."

Dean swallows again, bites the inside of his cheek.

"I'm not selfish enough to ask you to hitch your wagon to someone like me. I've had one foot in the grave since I was six years-old and I doubt I'm making it out of this Chuck shit alive. But that doesn't mean I don't want it—that I don't want you." Dean stands, shaking pins and needles out of his foot. "For what it's worth, you're pretty much the only thing I've wanted for myself since my dad put a gun I my hand."

+

Something rustles up ahead, close enough that Dean's levels his gun as he clears the next thicket of trees. He moves toward it slowly, careful where he places his feet. At the top of the rise, he sees—

"Cas?"

He's sitting in the dirt, hunched against the trunk of a tree. A pair of dead fire-breathing dogs are heaped fifty feet away, smoke still curling from their scorched noses and mouths. Dean's breath hitches; he hurries over and crouches at Cas' side.

"What happened? Are you—?"

"I'm fine," Cas says tiredly. Dirt is streaking his jaw and chin. "Smiting those things taxed what's left of my grace. I needed to rest for a minute."

"I've been looking for you. I—"

"I know. I… heard you."

Dean flushes. "You—you—"

"For what it's worth, you're the only thing I've ever wanted for myself as well."

"I—" Dean lets himself touch Cas' cheek, Cas' jaw. "What'd'ya say we find this ugly fucking flower and get the hell out of here?"

"Together?"

"Yeah," Dean says, smiling. "Together."

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post](https://xylodemon.tumblr.com/post/190292502749/deancas-fic-of-everything-that-stands-13k).


End file.
